RE: got a good feeling6 Mar 2019 06:47
Govt fixes mining policy, at long last
By: Sunil Jain March 6, 2019 7:06 AM
Since even non-oil minerals comprise 25% of our imports, large-scale mining is critical and will also create a lot of jobs.
Given the mining sector’s potential to both create millions of jobs and save billions of dollars of forex, it was always a surprise that the government was so slow to fix issues that have prevented it from growing fast, but the good news is that it has finally started making some attempt to fix things.
As the Niti Aayog strategy paper on this pointed out, India’s “prospective geology is broadly similar to that of Western Australia, especially in relation to iron ore, bauxite, coal, diamonds and heavy mineral sand”, but of the area identified as rich in minerals, only 10% has been explored—the corresponding figure for Australia is 95%—and an even smaller 1.5% is presently being mined. According to Niti Aayog, even doubling the area explored to 20% of “obvious geological potential” can create an additional 5 million jobs by 2022-23, from the current 10 million. Indeed, Niti Aayog points out that India’s imports of minerals are roughly seven times as high as the domestic output; such is the poor level of exploration and production.
While the finer details of the policy are yet to be made available, the Cabinet note makes some important departures from the current policy. Right now, if a firm that has a reconnaissance permit (RP) finds evidence of minerals, it has to inform the government which then auctions off the area; the new policy says such firms will get the right of first refusal. This is an important confidence-booster since no firm would like to find deposits of a mineral and then see the area being given to a competitor.
Apart from getting the policy right, what is equally critical is to fix the current levels of implementation such as the delays in getting permission. So, Niti Aayog has recommended that all statutory approvals should mandatorily be granted within a period of 180 days.
https://www.financialexpress.com/opinion/govt-fixes-mining-policy-but-finer-details-yet-to-be-out/1506194/
Sign In
Follow the stocks
